“Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama
administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration
Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better
metrics are pointless.”

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE PAY FOR ILLEGALS? ONE COUNTY ALONE, LOS ANGELES, PUTS OUT $1.6 BILLION PER YEAR!!!

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"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."

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What is sad about this is that most “anchor” babies will grow up understanding they are Mexicans, and will elect to speak only Spanish unless absolutely necessary to speak the gringo language. They will wave the Mexican flag, and celebrate Mexican holidays. In fact, the children of Mexican illegals born in this country, at our expense, are still MEXICAN CITIZENS!

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Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M (L.A.)

Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County

Published January 19, 2011

FoxNews.com

Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009.

Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known as CalWORKS. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the official claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010.

"Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," he said in a statement.

Antonovich's figures, though, center on costs generated by American-born children of illegal immigrants. Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said it's "unfair" to roll together costs associated with both illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

She also questioned the authenticity of Antonovich's numbers regarding health care and public safety -- though for the welfare program statistics, Antonovich cited numbers from the county's Department of Public Social Services.

Antonovich acknowledges that the children whose benefits he's focusing on are U.S.-born. But he argues that the money is collected by the illegal immigrant parents, putting a painful burden on taxpayers, including those who are legal immigrants.

"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."

He said the state should cut back on these social benefits. According to the November statistics, that cost accounted for 22 percent of all food stamp and CalWORKS spending in the county.

Over the summer, the Federation for American Immigration Reform also looked at these kinds of costs nationwide to get an idea of the burden to local governments at a time when many are grappling with budget deficits.

The organization reported that the cost of illegal immigration stands at about $113 billion a year. Nearly half of that amount went toward education costs, according to the study. Costs were naturally higher in states with large illegal immigrant populations -- in California, the total annual cost was pegged at $21.8 billion.

State legislation targeting illegal immigration is already starting to happen across America! This year will clearly be an historic year for us in the states if we are well organized and if we work hard.

We have dominated our opposition in state battles over the last few years and ALIPAC has played a key role in organizing these efforts, but 2011 can be our best year ever due to the election results.

Our focus in the states will be to ask state lawmakers to "protect American workers, students, and voters from illegal immigration."

This language will be at the center of all we do in 2011.

We want to request that our state legislators act to 1. Pass an improved version of Arizona's historic SB 1070. 2. Cut off all non emergency taxpayer benefits for illegal aliens and 3. Secure our ballot boxes by requiring all voter registrations to be checked for legal presence.

Each state where we pass a strong bill will increase pressures for illegal aliens to leave. We must secure our elections from illegal aliens by 2012!

ALIPAC will announce our "Battle Of the States 2011" official next Monday via national press release.

Please take steps now by gathering up the contact information for your state senator and representatives. You will need this information handy for many calls, emails, faxes, and letters in 2011. Your representatives may have changed since last year so get that current info!

You can begin your contact now with a general request.

Sample Message

"Please file and pass legislation designed to protect American workers, students, and voters from illegal immigration in our state in 2011. We need a version of Arizona's law here and we need to require that all voter registrations be checked for legal presence."

Please remember that the most effective way you can communicate this request is to call and speak with staff or the lawmaker directly and to follow-up your request in writing.

Many state lawmakers will make the time to speak with you directly.

We will provide you with information coming in from different states so you can monitor our progress and focus your attention in your state or other states as things progress.

Please gather your needed contact information and make your initial contacts with state lawmakers and prepare yourself to be more energetic and more effective than the illegal aliens and their supporters this year!

If you have questions or suggestions regarding this effort, please visit this link. ALIPAC activists stand ready to assist you 24/7.

http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-1172129.html#1172129

If you apply organized political pressure to state lawmakers early in 2011, it can lead to great results.

The decapitation of the lead Mexican investigator in the alleged murder of a jet-skier on a border lake is a sharp retort to President Obama's administration, a Texas congressman said.

"The Mexican drug cartels just sent a message to the White House that the United States no longer controls the border," Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told WND.

The severed head of investigator Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered this week to an army garrison in Ciudad Miguel Aleman in the Tamaulipas state in Mexico. The city is across the river from Zapata County, Texas, the location of Falcon Lake, where David Michael Hartley allegedly was killed by Mexican pirates while he was jet-skiing with his wife Tiffany.

Only last week, Tiffany Hartley met with Flores in Ciudad Miguel Aleman and reported that the investigator seemed to be working hard to find her husband, according to ABC News.

Get "The Late Great USA" and find out how America is giving away its sovereignty

Poe told WND that Hartley's body is unlikely to be recovered.

"When the Los Zetas drug cartel commits a murder, they dispose of the body where it will never be found, or they use the body to send a message to law enforcement," Poe said. "By decapitating Rolando Flores, the Mexican drug cartels sent a message to Mexico to stop investigating Hartley's murder."

The White House should not be intimidated, Poe insisted.

"Now is the time we should be sending more National Guard to the border."

Last week, Poe was joined by 20 members of the House to introduce the National Guard Border Enforcement Act, H.R.6253, authorizing the secretary of defense to make 10,000 National Guard troops available upon request by a U.S. governor to serve at the border under the command of the requesting governor.

Poe believes the Flores murder is just one more indication Mexico's drug war is out of control and increasingly dangerous to U.S. citizens.

"The decapitation of Rolando Flores is a warning to the United States and to Mexico that this portion of the border is protected by the Zetas," Poe said. "The Zetas intend to protect their drug routes on the border from law enforcement regardless whether that law enforcement is from Mexico or the United States."

Poe doubts Mexico will make serious efforts to apprehend David Michael Hartley's killers.

"Thousands of drug-related homicides are committed in Mexico every year, and very few are ever solved," he stressed. "That Mexican authorities have suggested Tiffany Hartley may have been involved in foul-play in her husband's death should make it clear Mexican law enforcement officers have no intention of seriously investigating or solving the crime."

Marco Antonio Guerrero Carrizales, the district attorney for the Miguel Aleman Province, adjoining Falcon Lake on the Mexican side of the border, has questioned whether Tiffany Hartley was involved in foul play.

"A local witness saw Tiffany Hartley escaping on her jet-ski to the Texas side of the lake," Gonzalez said. "She came in at high speed and was being pursued by armed men in a Mexican fishing boat that that the witness clearly observed."

Gonzalez said the witness was a long-standing member of the Zapata community who was well known to him and regarded as highly credible.

He said the statement of the witness was recorded in the police file but the name of the witness was being withheld from the public to protect his privacy.

"The testimony of this witness dispels any idea Mrs. Hartley was involved in any wrongdoing regarding the murder of her husband," he said firmly. "She called in a 911 phone call to our office at around 2:20 pm on the day of the incident, immediately after she got to shore, and her statements to my office confirm what the local witness observed."

Gonzales confirmed to WND that he had interviewed Mrs. Hartley himself.

He attributed the failure to recover David Hartley's jet ski and his body to the unwillingness of Mexico to cooperate

"The drug cartels operate from an island on the Mexican side of the lake," Gonzalez explained.

"Mexican law enforcement authorities do not control the lake – the pirates do," he said. Tons of illegal drugs are warehoused on that island by the drug cartels for smuggling into the United States and the pirates are well armed."

Emphasizing the need for the National Guard bill, Poe said the "first duty of the federal government is to protect its people."

"Texans are tired of the federal government's failure to secure our borders and enforce our laws, yet at the same time running roughshod over state governments when they try to enforce the law and protect their citizens," he said.

The Obama administration entered U.S. District Court to oppose Arizona's tough immigration law SB 1070, resulting in a decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton to strike down several key provisions of the law.

In the past four years, an estimated 28,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence.

Currently, the Department of Defense has allocated only 250 National Guard troops for the entire 1,256 mile-long Texas-Mexico border.

Under the National Guard Border Enforcement Act, National Guard troops would be authorized to conduct:

• Armed vehicle and foot patrols of the U.S. southern border;

• Interdiction of a vehicle, vessel, aircraft or other similar activities;

• Search, seizure and detention of suspects;

• Construction of roads, fences and vehicle barriers;

• Search and rescue operations;

• Intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance;

• Aviation support.

Additionally, the bill would allow the secretary of defense to authorize additional troops should operational control of the U.S. border not be achieved with the first 10,000 deployed.

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

OBAMA HAS HAD ONE AGENDA FROM DAY ONE: Service his big bankster donors and make sure they’re making staggering profits and safe from prison, and keeping our borders open for hordes more Mexican looters!

OBAMA’S ONLY JOBS PLAN IS CALLED AMNESTY!

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Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

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THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO DEMANDS LEGALS STOP SPEWING ALL THAT RACIST ANTI-IMMIGRANT RHETORIC…. By order of LA RAZA, “THE RACE”, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA!

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Lou Dobbs Tonight

Monday, February 11, 2008

In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in New York today on the first leg his five day tour across America to meddle in immigration issues in the United States. This is his first visit to the U.S. since he became President in 2006, but he will not meet with President Bush or any of the presidential candidates, who he has accused of spewing anti immigrant rhetoric. Join us for that report.

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UPDATE: ‘Illegal immigrant criminals back on street, thanks to ICE’

By: Barbara Hollingsworth

Local Opinion Editor

10/20/10 10:40 AM EDT

Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

Stewart also says that he is still waiting for information he requested about the whereabouts of some 2,739 criminals convicted in Prince William County since 2007 and sent to ICE for deportation. County police officers have already recaptured 249 of these felons.

Here is ICE’s response, received after deadline Tuesday:

“ICE has been in contact with Virginia law enforcement as well as state and local officials, including Mr. Stewart, on this issue. These officials are aware that ICE is currently in the process of gathering an extensive amount of information in response to their request.

“Once this information is compiled, ICE has offered to give a briefing to Mr. Stewart and his colleagues. ICE has also alerted Virginia officials to the fact that any personally identifiable information they have requested about aliens encountered by ICE in Virginia is protected under the Privacy Act and will be redacted from any materials shared by ICE.”

So the federal agency whose main mission is to enforce federal immigration law is not only releasing convicted criminals who entered the U.S. illegally and victimized American citizens back into local communities, it’s now in the business of protecting the “privacy rights” of these felons and refusing to share “personally identifiable information” with duly elected local officials and law enforcement.

Draw your own conclusions

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/update-illegal-immigrant-criminals-back-on-street-thanks-to-ice-105345073.html#ixzz13Iru6sVT

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OBAMA’S LA RAZA ADMINISTRATION:

FROM CREOLE FOLKS

Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist. MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything whenBarrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet. All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow.

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

Such a move, which is still under discussion, would bring a Washington veteran -- and someone with strong business ties -- into the administration as Obama sets out an agenda for the second half of his term while dealing with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has a new title: Republican ambassador to Latino voters.

Fluent in Spanish and married to a Mexican-born woman, Bush has spent much of his career wooing and winning Latino support for the Republican Party -- for his own two successful gubernatorial campaigns and twice for his older brother’s winning presidential bids.

Now, after four years of divisive immigration battles sparking protests among Latino communities, Bush is trying to do for his party what he did for himself and his family.

The 57-year-old Bush, now a senior adviser at Barclays Plc, is leading what he calls a “center-right” campaign to rebuild a fractured relationship between his party and Latino voters, the fastest growing U.S. minority according to the Census Bureau.

The newly formed Hispanic Leadership Network -- supported by former President George W. Bush and a team of allies -- aims to shift the Republican Party toward a so-called big-tent philosophy after a midterm campaign cycle featuring anti-illegal immigration rhetoric from Tea Party-backed candidates.

“There are many Latino Republicans who have been committed to this party that have stopped voting,” said Leslie Sanchez, a former Bush aide involved with the network. “This shifts the conversation.”

Inaugural Event

The group -- an offshoot of the American Action Network, one of the wealthiest Republican organizations channeling money into political campaigns -- is holding its inaugural event in Coral Gables, Florida.

Republican lawmakers, including newly elected Florida Governor Rick Scott, veteran party leaders and Latino strategists, mingled last night in the open-air courtyard of the historic Biltmore Hotel, as Jeb Bush gave interviews in Spanish.

“Without an active participation of the most dynamic, growing part of what will be the governing coalition in our country, without the active involvement of Hispanics, we will not be the governing philosophy of our country,” Bush told the crowd.

Today, participants at the gathering included National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, potential Republican candidate for president in 2012. The conference is sponsored by companies including Google Inc., AT&T Inc., Altria Group Inc. and Oracle Corp.

Former President Bush

Jeb Bush’s brother, former President Bush, spoke to the group in a video address today.

“There’s a lot of common ground to be achieved between Republicans and people who are of Hispanic origin,” the former president said.

The group aims to build support for the party in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections. A number of states with large Latino populations -- including Florida, Nevada and Colorado -- may prove critical battlegrounds in the race.

Although Hispanic Republicans in Florida, Nevada and New Mexico won high-profile races in November’s elections, Democrats largely won the Latino vote in other states by big margins, polling shows.

Sixty percent of Latino voters supported Democratic candidates in 2010 House races, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, while 38 percent supported Republicans.

40 Percent of Vote

“I don’t think 40 percent of the Hispanic vote can be our ceiling if we plan to impact our nation in the coming decades,” Bush wrote in an opinion page article published Jan. 9 by the Miami Herald.

President Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2008 election while his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, won 31 percent, according to exit polls. In the 2004 race, Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts won 53 percent of the Hispanic vote, while George W. Bush got 44 percent -- a record for a Republican presidential candidate, the polls found.

The question for Jeb Bush and his co-chairman, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, is whether they can persuade many in their own party to join the effort.

“The only Republicans that I think get it when it comes to Hispanics are the Bush brothers,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of Miami-based Bendixen and Associates Inc., a Democratic-leaning political consulting firm that specializes in Hispanic outreach. “That’s about where it starts and ends in my judgment.”

Out of Step

Jeb Bush has found himself out of step with much of his party on immigration-related issues. He has urged Congress to take up a comprehensive revision of immigration laws, a proposal opposed by Republican congressional leaders, and said he opposed an Arizona law requiring police to check the citizenship of suspected illegal immigrants.

Hispanic Republican leaders, including former Florida Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, said Congress should overhaul immigration laws and pass the “Dream Act,” a proposal to let some children of illegal immigrants gain legal status if they attend college or serve in the military.

Cornyn and other Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the Dream Act in December. Cornyn said he voted not to take up the bill because he feared Democrats would use a vote on the measure to “bludgeon” Republicans politically.

Pawlenty, the only potential Republican 2012 presidential candidate who attended the conference, also said he didn’t support the legislation. Republicans can appeal to Hispanic voters with a broader economic message, he said.

‘Incomplete and Presumptuous’

“It’s incomplete and presumptuous for people to say the only issue the Latino community cares about is the immigration issue,” Pawlenty said. “Not every conversation has to be focused just on that. It has to be part of a broader message.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who aides said was delivering a video address to the meeting, founded a bilingual website in 2009 aimed at promoting conservative values and Latino heritage. That site, named the Americano, recently held its own conference in Washington.

Since Republicans rejected President George W. Bush’s comprehensive immigration plan in 2007, the party has taken a harder line against illegal immigration.

“The debate about immigration has been radicalized and made into this anti-Latino, anti-Hispanic campaign,” said Manuel Pastor, a professor of geography and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “Those kinds of statements really strike a chord that’s much deeper in the Latino community than some Republicans have realized.”

Reid’s Re-Election

Latino voters turned out in Nevada for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last year after his Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, ran a campaign ad the Latino community criticized as racially biased. Reid won more than 90 percent of the Latino vote in his re-election victory, according to polls by Seattle- based research center Latino Decisions.

In California, Latinos gave 64 percent of their vote to Democrat Jerry Brown as he won the governor’s race over Republican Meg Whitman, the former CEO of EBay Inc., who got 31 percent of the Latino vote, according to exit polls. In late September, it was revealed Whitman had employed a housekeeper who was in the country illegally and who Whitman subsequently fired. Whitman later said she believed the housekeeper should be deported.

“Republicans think that they have an image problem but they really actually have a policy problem,” Pastor said. “It’s hard to convince someone to vote for you when you are threatening to deport their grandmother.”

“Just last week, a Dallas newspaper reported that Mexican drug violence hit record levels in scale and brutality in 2010. More than 13,000 people were murdered across Mexico in disturbing and cruel ways not commonly seen in previous years and the problem is especially critical along the U.S. border. A few months ago a veteran federal agent revealed that Middle Eastern terrorists regularly enter the country through the porous, 2,000-mile Mexican border.”

Known as the Boquillas crossing, the port of entry is located in southwest Texas’ Big Bend National Park, an 800,000-acre oasis known for its diverse terrain of deserts, mountains and rivers. The Boquillas crossing, which links the U.S. to the Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen across the Rio Grande River, was shut down after the 2001 terrorist attacks because it represented a national security threat.

Amid escalating drug cartel crime in Mexico and reports of Middle Eastern terrorists slipping into the U.S. through the southern border, Homeland Security officials will reopen the crossing in 2012. It will be “monitored” by immigration officials hundreds of miles away and those entering the U.S. will submit documents electronically, according to a San Antonio newspaper report.

The U.S. government will construct an information center and bathrooms to accommodate border crossers and the area will return to the pre 9/11 “bi-national community” where Americans regularly boated across the Rio Grande and Mexicans came into the U.S. for groceries. Area residents who expressed security concerns were reassured by the head of the Homeland Security agency handling the matter.

“People who act criminally will act criminally regardless if there’s a lawful crossing here,” said Alan Bersin, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that guards the nation’s borders and safeguards the American homeland. Bersin flew to the area by helicopter to announce the reopening, which is scheduled for next spring.

He does admit that Mexico has a “long way to go” in combating organized crime and corruption, but says the country has “acknowledged the problem” and taken “corrective action.” Besides, a legal rowboat crossing on a remote, shallow portion of the Rio Grande won’t affect illegal immigration or contraband, according to Bersin.

Just last week, a Dallas newspaper reported that Mexican drug violence hit record levels in scale and brutality in 2010. More than 13,000 people were murdered across Mexico in disturbing and cruel ways not commonly seen in previous years and the problem is especially critical along the U.S. border. A few months ago a veteran federal agent revealed that Middle Eastern terrorists regularly enter the country through the porous, 2,000-mile Mexican border.

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THE MEXICANS INVADE ARMED!

MACCLATCHY

Seizing AK-47s at the Texas border

Posted: 13 Jan 2011 03:51 PM PST

To judge by the comments that poured in after I wrote this story about the smuggling of automatic weapons from the U.S. to Mexico, many Americans don’t believe that it is happening. And they told me so in dozens of emails and postings.

They say the Mexican drug cartels use automatic weapons, not the semiautomatic weapons available at gun shops in Texas and Arizona.

The cartels are stealing their weapons from the Mexican army, getting them from Central America and buying them on the world market. But getting them at a gun shop in Houston or Phoenix? No way, Jose.

In fact, it is not hard to alter an AK-47 semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic one. A Mexican army general showed me how. And regardless of what some readers say, the guns are flowing across the border. Just today, the customs and immigration branch of Homeland Security announced that it had caught a pickup truck with 15 AK-47s coming across the border (press release here).

“Federal agents received a call from Hidalgo Police Department after officers conducted a traffic stop on the city's east side on highway 281. During the officer's routine inspection of the vehicle, they identified suspicious activity. ICE HSI agents arrived at the scene of the traffic stop and took the vehicle to the Hidalgo Port of Entry where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers conducted an intensive examination of the vehicle. It was during the examination that officers discovered the rifles hidden inside the fuel tank of the pickup truck.

"Weapons trafficking fuels violence by criminal organizations and threatens the security of communities along our borders and throughout the country," said Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in San Antonio."

Authorities arrested the driver and the passenger, Antonio Ibarra, 41, and Edwardo Ibarra, 37, respectively, on state charges for firearms smuggling.

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Threat grows as Mexican cartels move to beef up U.S. presence

By William Booth and Nick Miroff

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 1:36 AM

SAN DIEGO -- When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones - then listened, watched and waited.

Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects - including Mexican police and top officials - allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.

According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother's front yard.

But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called "The Office."

At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed "Luz Verde," or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence.

The Fernando Sanchez Organization's San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving it greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.

"They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico," said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged drug ring next year.

The case shows that as the border becomes less of an operational barrier for Mexican cartels, it appears to be less of one for U.S. surveillance efforts. Because the suspects' cellphone and radio traffic could be captured by towers on the northern side of the border, U.S. agents were able to eavesdrop on calls made on Mexican cellphones, between two callers in Mexico - a tactic prosecutors say has never been deployed so extensively.

Captured on one wiretap: a cartel leader, a former homicide detective from Tijuana, negotiating with a Mexican state judicial police officer about a job offer to lead a death squad.

Recorded on other calls: the operation's biggest catch, Jesus Quinones Marquez, a high-ranking Mexican official and alleged cartel operative code-named "El Rinon," or "The Kidney." As he worked and socialized with U.S. law enforcement officials in his role as international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office, Quinones passed confidential information to cartel bosses and directed Mexican police to take action against rival traffickers, prosecutors say.

He and 34 other suspects are now in U.S. jails. The remaining eight are still at large.

Investigators say it is not unusual for Mexican cartel leaders and their underlings to move north to seek refuge, or place representatives in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta to manage large deliveries of drugs. But the Fernando Sanchez Organization was more ambitious. It was building a network in San Diego, complete with senior managers to facilitate large and small drug shipments and sales.

Cross-border network

The gang is an offshoot of the Tijuana cartel, led by baby-faced Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the once fearsome Arellano-Felix brothers who ran the Tijuana drug trade for almost 20 years before they were captured or killed. The nephew's organization is a weaker syndicate, at war with itself and rivals, police say, and locked in a desperate struggle to maintain market share in the highly competitive billion-dollar drug corridor into California.

Unlike the cartel crews in Mexico, which are typically built on strong ties between families or friends, the San Diego franchise recruited from U.S.-based Latino street gangs. Some were illegal immigrants, others U.S. citizens, according to arrest warrants. Twelve of the 43 indicted have alleged gang affiliations in San Diego. Six of the 43 are current or former Mexican law enforcement officers. Eight are women.

"You couldn't pick these people out of a crowd," said Leonard Miranda, a retired captain in the Chula Vista, Calif., police department who worked on the investigation. "Some of them kept a very low profile. Their family members didn't even know."

According to the 86-page federal racketeering indictment unsealed July 23, cartel members operated stash houses, managed smuggling crews, distributed marijuana and methamphetamine, trafficked weapons, laundered money, committed robberies and collected drug debts. When people did not pay, they were kidnapped or targeted with execution on both sides of the border.

U.S. authorities say the wiretaps allowed them to foil murder plots and other violent acts. The assistant special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, David Bowdich, said his teams stopped the execution of two Mexican police officers. The authorities also saved a cartel associate called "Sharky" who was going to be killed because he had disrespected drug lords in Tijuana.

Troubling signs

From their apartments by the beach or cars parked at motels, the targets of the investigation talked and talked on their cellphones.

They almost always spoke in Spanish, usually in clipped code, with lots of street slang. They bought and quickly discarded the phones. Top lieutenants often employed "alineadores," personal assistants who juggled a dozen phones and took messages so that the boss would not be heard on the line. Investigators say the alleged cartel members clearly were afraid that their calls could be monitored.

And they were right. In February, the FBI secured hard-to-get "roving" wiretaps for 44 individuals that allowed investigators to track their movements via global positioning satellites.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, the Mexican government was not involved in the investigation.

Quinones, the high-ranking Mexican official, was a close adviser to Attorney General Rommel Moreno, the top prosecutor in Mexico's Baja California state. He was arrested July 22 when U.S. agents invited him to the San Diego police department to help with an investigation. It was a setup.

"My client's gone from a cross-border international liaison officer to a guy in a 10-by-10-foot isolation cell in lockdown 23 hours a day," said his defense attorney, Patrick Hall, who described Quinones as "a normal dad with three kids, married 11 years, who lived in Tijuana all his adult life and was one of the dads out there at the Little League baseball games."

Hall said the federal agents were "reading in facts and interpretations and distortions into the true meanings of what's being said on the wiretaps."

Quinones's arrest has almost certainly dealt a blow to efforts at cross-border information sharing and collaboration, though officials on both sides played down the apparent betrayal. "Would you stop going to church just because of one bad priest?" Quinones's boss, Moreno, said in an interview in Tijuana.

But the U.S. wiretaps also detected other troubling signs of corruption.

On the day of the mass arrests, U.S. agents arranged for suspected drug lieutenant Jose Najera Gil to pick up visa documents he was seeking from the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. But the Mexican police who were supposed to arrest him at the consulate failed to show up.

A day before the arrests, another Mexican police officer, Jose Ortega Nuvo, received a call on his cellphone, which was being tapped by U.S agents. The caller warned him that he was about to be arrested. According to court testimony, the call came from the offices of the federal police in Mexico City - a special unit vetted to work alongside agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Get on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand the Mexican occupation. NCLR.org

FOR THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACY

LA RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL.

LA RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERICANS, AMERICAN LAWS, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, and the AMERICAN FLAG.

However LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.

You can contact President Obama and let him know of your opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

Obama soft on illegals enforcement

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.

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Here is the Department of Homeland Security's Hotline for reporting suspected illegal employees and employers: 866-347-2423 (YOU MAY BE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE. HISPANDERING OBAMA SELECTED LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO TO HEAD “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP” FOR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS)

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Immigration Enforcement Group Defends Against Amnesty Push

The ALIPAC Team

www.alipac.us

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Here is the Department of Homeland Security's Hotline for reporting suspected illegal employees and employers: 866-347-2423

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OUTSIDE OF MEXICO CITY, THE LARGEST NUMBER OF KIDNAPPINGS IS IN PHOENIX

And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.

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WHY DOES FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI WANT I.C.E TO LEAVE ILLEGAL CRIMINALS ALONE? IS IT BECAUSE THEY CONSIDER THEM VOTERS?

CERTAINLY HISPANDERING BARACK OBAMA DOES! HE KNOWS HE’S LIED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SO MANY TIMES THAT ONLY HIS BIG BANKSTER MONEY, AND THE VOTES OF ILLEGALS WILL CON HIM INTO ANOTHER 4 YEARS OF CON JOBS!

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HOW MANY ILLEGAL CRIMINALS ARE ON THE PROWL?

400,000 and they’re just waiting for OBAMA’S LA RAZA AMNESTY!

There are currently over 400,000 unaccounted for illegal alien criminals with outstanding deportation orders. Those are just the ones apprehended. At least one fourth of these are hard core criminals. Nobody knows how many more there are, but they are numerous and roaming your neighborhoods, preying on you and your family. Read more about it here.

Many of these heinous crimes are against children. How many children are being molested, raped, and murdered by illegal aliens? Nobody knows for sure but the numbers are staggering. To give you some idea of the prevalence of the crime, peruse the ICE Public Information News Releases.

While there are numerous reports of individual sexual predators such as Mexican Sex Offender and Six-Time Deportee in ICE Custody or Man Deported Following Conviction For Molesting 6-year-old, you will see many reports of multiple child predators being caught and deported. Some of them over the last two years are as follows:

In case you are interested, that is 250 illegal alien child molesters. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

When we talk about the costs to secure our borders, we need to ask "How many crimes against children is acceptable collateral damage?" Isn't that what it is all about? Cheap lettuce versus molested, raped and murdered children - a cost/benefit tradeoff.

Occasionally, the Federal Government decides to actually do something about some of the more violent illegal alien criminals - after they are already here and have committed mayhem! Operation Predator evolved out of ICE's mission to find and deport illegal aliens with the more heinous criminal records. The majority of the arrests under Operation Predator - roughly 85% - involved foreign nationals in this country whose child sex crimes made them removable from the United States. By matching immigration databases with state Megan's law directories, ICE agents have arrested more than 1,800 registered sex offenders.

Digressing for a moment, what the hell was a convicted, illegal alien sex offender even doing out of jail or not immediately deported – even if 63% do come right back - let alone roaming around the neighborhoods while on a registry! Has the judicial system in this country gone insane?

In any case, Operation Predator began on July 9, 2003, and resulted in 6,085 child predator arrests throughout the country - an average of roughly 250 arrests per month and eight arrests per day. While arrests have been made in every state, the most have occurred in these states: Arizona (207), California (1,578), Florida (255), Illinois (282), Michigan (153), Minnesota (190), New Jersey (423), New York (367), Oregon (148) and Texas (545).

While Operation Predator was a noble effort and ICE is to be commended, it only made a small dent in the criminal activity and number of horrific crimes being committed by illegal alien child sexual predators.

It is worth noting that some pedophile statistics report that each pedophile molests average of 148 children. If so, that could be as many as 900,580 victims from just the 6,085 illegal alien predators that were caught. Regardless, how many children being molested is acceptable collateral damage?

In fact, the criminal activity in the illegal alien community is now so bad that illegal aliens are being held for ransom and as slaves by other illegal aliens and smugglers are kidnapping illegal aliens from other smugglers! Then there is the fast growing "sex slave" problem as reported in The Girls Next Door, SEX TRAFFICKING - San Francisco Is A Major Center For International Crime Networks That Smuggle And Enslave, Raid in Tennessee ends girl's captivity as a sex slave Profiling Sex Trafficking: Illegal Immigrants At Risk, Latina Sex Slavery, and Police sting in Colorado shuts down Pacifica brothel

For more crimes committed by illegal aliens and the personal impact it has had on individual citizens see Immigrations Human Cost, Victims of Illegal Aliens, Crime Victims of Illegal Aliens, Escaping Justice, Predatory Aliens, Crimes involving immigrants from around the world, both legal and otherwise, and Victims of Illegal Aliens Memorial. Go to Fallen Heroes for information on a few more cops killed by illegal aliens.

When visiting any of the links and sites, keep in mind that nobody is tracking and reporting the crimes on a national basis and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

While it is a fact that most illegal aliens are law abiding, except for breaking immigration laws, it is also a fact that a significant percentage of illegal aliens have no respect for the rule of law and our legal customs. Many come with anti-American attitudes and philosophies that are totally alien to our culture, a subject addressed later in this paper. The end result is an ever-growing lawlessness among large portions of the illegal alien communities. It only makes sense that illegal alien criminals come to the United States - this is where the money is and our jails are a whole lot nicer than what they have in their home countries.

As previously noted, this report does not go into the property crimes being committed by illegal aliens. However, like the activities of other equal opportunity criminals, many property crimes are drug related, an activity that many illegal aliens, especially illegal alien gangs, are involved in. While violent crimes against one's person are the most serious, if your identity or car is stolen by an illegal alien you won't be too happy about it.

As a small example of property crimes, in 2003, according to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, 57,600 cars were stolen in Phoenix alone. The owner losses are estimated to exceed $864 million. Most of the stolen cars ended up in Mexico and were never recovered. How many of those cars were stolen by illegal alien criminals versus resident criminals is unknown but you can rest assured that illegal aliens had a large part of it..

THE CITY of CHICAGO HAS REQUESTED THAT OBAMA NOT ENFORCE THE LAWS AGAINST ILLEGALS IN CHICAGO. NO I.C.E. ENFORCEMENT.

THAT SHOULDN’T BE A PROBLEM, BECAUSE IN OBAMA’S LA RAZA INFESTED ADMINISTRATION, THE REASON HE PICKED HAROLD HURTT TO HEAD UP I.C.E. IS BECAUSE HURTT IS AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT!

“FAIR estimates that the illegal alien population residing in Illinois costs its taxpayers more than $4.5 billion annually.”

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OBAMA COUNTRY!

FAIRUS.org

Chicago City Council Urges Feds to Halt Deportations

Last Thursday, the Chicago City Council unanimously adopted a resolution asking the federal government to halt deportations of illegal aliens. (ABC News, Jan. 13, 2011) Specifically, the resolution urged President Obama to use his executive powers to call an immediate end to the deportation of illegal workers whose families contain either a U.S. citizen or an individual who would be eligible for a stay of deportation or conditional resident status under the failed DREAM Act. (Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 14, 2011)

During debate of the resolution, the council members (called “aldermen”) called the deportation of illegal aliens “inhumane” and likened the enforcement of federal immigration laws to U.S. Marshalls tracking down fugitive slaves during the Civil War. (Id.) Alderman Edward M. Burke of Chicago’s 14th Ward commented at a City Hall Press Conference the day the resolution passed, “It is just unfathomable that the federal government persists in this cruel and unusual punishment to innocent members of our society….If Illinois can have a moratorium on the death penalty, the U.S. ought to have a moratorium on these cruel deportations.” (Id.)

Alderman Roberto Maldonado of the 26th Ward used the resolution as an opportunity to criticize President Obama for increasing the number of deportations over that of the Bush Administration. “This is the president [who] promised the Latino community and the immigrant community that he was gonna send a bill for immigration reform within the first 90 days of his administration. He’s just about to embark on his re-election campaign for his second term, and we’re still waiting.” (Id.)

The Chicago City Council’s resolution comes a day after Illinois lawmakers raised the State’s income tax by about 66 percent in an effort to balance the state budget. (NY Times¸ Jan. 12, 2011) Illinois has a current deficit of about $13 billion, $8 billion of which is partially attributable to unpaid bills to Illinois social service agencies. (Id.) FAIR estimates that the illegal alien population residing in Illinois costs its taxpayers more than $4.5 billion annually. (See FAIR’s National Cost Study, Table 15, July, 2010)

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

THE COMING LATINO REVOLT!

THE RISE OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “THE RACE” , A HIGHLY RACIST MEXICAN SUPREMACIST MOVEMENT.

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez is one of the most rabidly racist of the La Raza party

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The Senate is set to vote on a controversial immigration bill. If it fails, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez tells Bryan Curtis he’s prepared to ditch Obama and the Democrats—and take the movement to the streets.

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Illinois Spends $55 Mil To Insure Illegal Immigrants

A universal children’s health insurance program created by Illinois’ corrupt former governor is covering mostly illegal immigrants and costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars amid a perplexing $13 billion state budget deficit.

About 75% of the children enrolled in the All Kids Health Care program (also known as KidCare) are illegal aliens and the annual cost of covering them is nearly $55 million, according to a state audit of the 5-year-old insurance program. The findings, issued recently by the Illinois State Auditor General, are detailed in a 14-page report that’s been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

It reveals that two-thirds of the 71,665 children enrolled in the program in 2009 are undocumented immigrants. Illinois taxpayers dished out an astounding $54.9 million to provide them with medical insurance that year alone and there’s no telling what future tabs will be as the enrollees grow.

When former Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose federal corruption trial is set to begin this week, proudly signed legislation to create the insurance program, he assured it would help families who can’t afford health insurance but “are doing everything they’re supposed to do—working hard, paying their taxes.” The program is supposed to be partially funded by low monthly premiums charged to families.

The reality is that the severely mismanaged insurance program keeps paying medical claims when families don’t pay their premiums and many claims are paid after recipients are too old to participate. Additionally, All Kids is only serving about a third of its intended beneficiaries at double the cost estimated by legislators who created it with great fanfare.

Illinois has long offered illegal aliens sanctuary and in fact passed legislation a few years ago restricting employers from verifying whether employees are authorized to work in the United States. Various cities, including Chicago and Addison, forbid law enforcement officers from inquiring about the immigration status of suspected illegal aliens. As a result the state spends more than $3 billion annually on healthcare, education and incarceration for illegal immigrants.

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FROM CREOLE FOLKS

J.P. MORGAN IS ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST DONORS. BY PAYING OFF OBAMA, MORGAN WAS ABLE TO SWINDLE AROUND OBAMA’S CALCULATEDLY LIMP BANKSTER REGULATION, AND CONTINUE ON THEIR BANKSTERS RAPE AND PILLAGE!

THE BANKSTERS’ INVESTMENT IN BARACK OBAMA HAS BEEN STAGGERINGLY PROFITABLE TO BIG BANKSTERS!

Obama Seeks Brother of "Chicago Mob Boss" for Top White House Post

The roaches and con-artist, fake journalist on cable news are all lying about William Daley being all this and all that, this man is an open borders, down with America, free trade globalist. MSNBC and Gretta "the Scientology" Van Susteren from Fox News are knowingly deceiving the public about D. Issa & his letter to "business owners"=which they made into such a BIG DAM DEAL, but no one says anything when Barrack Hussein Obama, comes around with all of these shady bankers, hedge fund managers and Wall St. Tycoons, which he puts in his cabinet. All of Obama's meeting with Wall Street asking, "What can I do for you?" is never something covered by Keith Oberman or Rachel Maddow.

(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is considering naming William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive and former U.S. Commerce secretary, to a high-level administration post, possibly White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

Such a move, which is still under discussion, would bring a Washington veteran -- and someone with strong business ties -- into the administration as Obama sets out an agenda for the second half of his term while dealing with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

Former HPD Chief Harold Hurtt, 63, said Wednesday that he accepted the position as director of ICE's Office of State and Local Coordination.

Former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, who has been a vocal critic of a controversial program at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has taken a high-profile job at the federal agency.

At ICE, Hurtt will act as the new director in charge of outreach with local and state law enforcement and non-governmental organizations.

Hurtt, 63, said Wednesday that he accepted the position as director of ICE's Office of State and Local Coordination, which is primarily tasked with outreach efforts, not oversight of ICE's partnerships with local law enforcement. He will officially start the job, which he said pays about $180,000 a year, on July 6.

Hurtt, who served as chief in Houston until he resigned in December, criticized one of ICE's key programs involving local law enforcement during his tenure here and in his former role as head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

He said in his new role, he plans to focus on providing accurate information on illegal immigration to law enforcement partners to "avoid emotional responses" to the issue. He also said he hopes to create a stakeholder group to help improve ICE's outreach efforts.

Hurtt and former Mayor Bill White faced harsh criticism during their tenures over the city's role in immigration enforcement. Much of the conflict during the past year focused on HPD's participation — or lack thereof - in ICE's 287(g) program, which trains local law enforcement to assist ICE with immigration screening.

ILLEGALS LOVE THIS OBAMA PICK!

Backlash to policy

Hurtt and the former mayor announced in spring 2009 that the city would participate in 287(g), provided it was confined to the city's jails. Hurtt steadfastly opposed having Houston officers question people in the field about their immigration status.

That decision resulted in backlash from some members of the police union and anti-illegal immigrant advocates but won him praise of leaders in Houston's immigrant community.

Hurtt said Wednesday that his reluctance stemmed in part from HPD's "resource capabilities."

"I had concerns about officers in the field concentrating their efforts and resources on the enforcement of immigration," Hurtt said.

He also said he feared that having officers question suspects in the field could result in fewer members of immigrant communities coming forward to report crime.

"I think that was a legitimate concern and still is," Hurtt said.

The city eventually backed away from participating in 287(g) and instead chose another ICE partnership, called Secure Communities, which runs fingerprint-based immigration history checks on all suspects booked into the local jails and notifies ICE automatically of any "hits" in the system.

Hurtt said that in his new role, he will support local law enforcement agencies' decision to participate in any ICE program of their choosing, even if it involves questioning suspects on the street about their status.

Curtis Collier, with the Spring-based U.S. Border Watch, said it was "extremely hypocritical" for Hurtt to take the position.

"There's no way you can head up an office if you don't believe in what the office is supposed to do," Collier said. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement's primary mission is to protect the American people. If this guy believes any of these programs should not be enforced, he's certainly going to be a very weak advocate for them."

Cesar Espinosa, a Houston immigrant advocate, said Hurtt was always "welcoming and open" to the concerns of immigrant advocates.

"We felt that as chief, he actually believed that the main focus of police should be to protect the community as a whole, regardless of immigration status," Espinosa said.

"Chief Hurtt is a respected member of the law enforcement community and understands the concerns of local law enforcement leaders," Morton said.

LOOK AT THE MEXICAN CRIME RATES IN PHOENIX – HOME INVASION, CAR THEFT, AND KIDNAPPING CAPITAL OF AMERICA, AND NOW CAPITAL OF NARCOMEX’S DRUG CARTEL INROAD!

Before heading up the 7,000-strong HPD in 2004, Hurtt served as the police chief in Phoenix, Ariz.

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PART OF OBAMA’S LA RAZA PARTY HISPANDERING FOR ILLEGALS’ VOTES

FROM JUDICIAL WATCH

Chief Who Supports Sanctuary Policies Gets Top ICE Job

Last Updated: Fri, 06/25/2010 - 1:30pm

In a laughable move, the Obama Administration has appointed a police chief who supports illegal alien sanctuary policies to oversee an immigration enforcement program that requires a partnership between federal and local authorities.

The new director for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination is Harold Hurtt, an outspoken critic of immigration enforcement on the local level. As police chief in two different cities with huge illegal alien populations—Phoenix and Houston—Hurtt enforced don’t-ask-don’t-tell immigration measures that prevented officers from inquiring about a suspects’ legal status in the U.S.

In his new post, Hurtt will get $180,000 a year to supervise outreach and communication between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies. In essence, he is charged with strengthening the collaboration between local police and federal immigration officials in an effort to combat a crisis that has rocked practically every major U.S. city and many small municipalities.

Homeland Security officials are promoting Hurtt as “a respected member of the law enforcement community” who will be an “invaluable asset to ICE’s outreach and coordination efforts.” The reality is that he opposes immigration enforcement and as police chief protected the most violent of criminals. Hurtt has even testified before Congress that local police should not assist with immigration enforcement.

His pro-immigration policies enabled illegal immigrants with extensive criminal histories to murder two police officers and seriously injure another while he was chief in Phoenix and later in Houston. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Hurtt on behalf of the deceased Houston officer’s wife for implementing the sanctuary policies that led to her husband’s death.

In the 2007 incident, Officer Rodney Johnson was brutally shot by a previously deported illegal immigrant during a traffic stop. The illegal alien, Juan Quintero, had an extensive criminal record and had been deported three years earlier for molesting a child. The Mexican national had also been in trouble for driving while intoxicated, driving with a suspended license and for failing to stop and provide information after an automobile accident. When Johnson arrested him, Quintero shot him four times in the back of the head with a 9 millimeter handgun concealed in the waistband of his pants.

The decapitation of the lead Mexican investigator in the alleged murder of a jet-skier on a border lake is a sharp retort to President Obama's administration, a Texas congressman said.

"The Mexican drug cartels just sent a message to the White House that the United States no longer controls the border," Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, told WND.

The severed head of investigator Rolando Armando Flores Villegas was delivered this week to an army garrison in Ciudad Miguel Aleman in the Tamaulipas state in Mexico. The city is across the river from Zapata County, Texas, the location of Falcon Lake, where David Michael Hartley allegedly was killed by Mexican pirates while he was jet-skiing with his wife Tiffany.

Only last week, Tiffany Hartley met with Flores in Ciudad Miguel Aleman and reported that the investigator seemed to be working hard to find her husband, according to ABC News.

Get "The Late Great USA" and find out how America is giving away its sovereignty

Poe told WND that Hartley's body is unlikely to be recovered.

"When the Los Zetas drug cartel commits a murder, they dispose of the body where it will never be found, or they use the body to send a message to law enforcement," Poe said. "By decapitating Rolando Flores, the Mexican drug cartels sent a message to Mexico to stop investigating Hartley's murder."

The White House should not be intimidated, Poe insisted.

"Now is the time we should be sending more National Guard to the border."

Last week, Poe was joined by 20 members of the House to introduce the National Guard Border Enforcement Act, H.R.6253, authorizing the secretary of defense to make 10,000 National Guard troops available upon request by a U.S. governor to serve at the border under the command of the requesting governor.

Poe believes the Flores murder is just one more indication Mexico's drug war is out of control and increasingly dangerous to U.S. citizens.

"The decapitation of Rolando Flores is a warning to the United States and to Mexico that this portion of the border is protected by the Zetas," Poe said. "The Zetas intend to protect their drug routes on the border from law enforcement regardless whether that law enforcement is from Mexico or the United States."

Poe doubts Mexico will make serious efforts to apprehend David Michael Hartley's killers.

"Thousands of drug-related homicides are committed in Mexico every year, and very few are ever solved," he stressed. "That Mexican authorities have suggested Tiffany Hartley may have been involved in foul-play in her husband's death should make it clear Mexican law enforcement officers have no intention of seriously investigating or solving the crime."

Marco Antonio Guerrero Carrizales, the district attorney for the Miguel Aleman Province, adjoining Falcon Lake on the Mexican side of the border, has questioned whether Tiffany Hartley was involved in foul play.

"A local witness saw Tiffany Hartley escaping on her jet-ski to the Texas side of the lake," Gonzalez said. "She came in at high speed and was being pursued by armed men in a Mexican fishing boat that that the witness clearly observed."

Gonzalez said the witness was a long-standing member of the Zapata community who was well known to him and regarded as highly credible.

He said the statement of the witness was recorded in the police file but the name of the witness was being withheld from the public to protect his privacy.

"The testimony of this witness dispels any idea Mrs. Hartley was involved in any wrongdoing regarding the murder of her husband," he said firmly. "She called in a 911 phone call to our office at around 2:20 pm on the day of the incident, immediately after she got to shore, and her statements to my office confirm what the local witness observed."

Gonzales confirmed to WND that he had interviewed Mrs. Hartley himself.

He attributed the failure to recover David Hartley's jet ski and his body to the unwillingness of Mexico to cooperate

"The drug cartels operate from an island on the Mexican side of the lake," Gonzalez explained.

"Mexican law enforcement authorities do not control the lake – the pirates do," he said. Tons of illegal drugs are warehoused on that island by the drug cartels for smuggling into the United States and the pirates are well armed."

Emphasizing the need for the National Guard bill, Poe said the "first duty of the federal government is to protect its people."

"Texans are tired of the federal government's failure to secure our borders and enforce our laws, yet at the same time running roughshod over state governments when they try to enforce the law and protect their citizens," he said.

The Obama administration entered U.S. District Court to oppose Arizona's tough immigration law SB 1070, resulting in a decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton to strike down several key provisions of the law.

In the past four years, an estimated 28,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence.

Currently, the Department of Defense has allocated only 250 National Guard troops for the entire 1,256 mile-long Texas-Mexico border.

Under the National Guard Border Enforcement Act, National Guard troops would be authorized to conduct:

• Armed vehicle and foot patrols of the U.S. southern border;

• Interdiction of a vehicle, vessel, aircraft or other similar activities;

• Search, seizure and detention of suspects;

• Construction of roads, fences and vehicle barriers;

• Search and rescue operations;

• Intelligence gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance;

• Aviation support.

Additionally, the bill would allow the secretary of defense to authorize additional troops should operational control of the U.S. border not be achieved with the first 10,000 deployed.

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

OBAMA HAS HAD ONE AGENDA FROM DAY ONE: Service his big bankster donors and make sure they’re making staggering profits and safe from prison, and keeping our borders open for hordes more Mexican looters!

OBAMA’S ONLY JOBS PLAN IS CALLED AMNESTY!

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Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

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THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO DEMANDS LEGALS STOP SPEWING ALL THAT RACIST ANTI-IMMIGRANT RHETORIC…. By order of LA RAZA, “THE RACE”, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA!

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Lou Dobbs Tonight

Monday, February 11, 2008

In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in New York today on the first leg his five day tour across America to meddle in immigration issues in the United States. This is his first visit to the U.S. since he became President in 2006, but he will not meet with President Bush or any of the presidential candidates, who he has accused of spewing anti immigrant rhetoric. Join us for that report.

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UPDATE: ‘Illegal immigrant criminals back on street, thanks to ICE’

By: Barbara Hollingsworth

Local Opinion Editor

10/20/10 10:40 AM EDT

Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

Stewart also says that he is still waiting for information he requested about the whereabouts of some 2,739 criminals convicted in Prince William County since 2007 and sent to ICE for deportation. County police officers have already recaptured 249 of these felons.

Here is ICE’s response, received after deadline Tuesday:

“ICE has been in contact with Virginia law enforcement as well as state and local officials, including Mr. Stewart, on this issue. These officials are aware that ICE is currently in the process of gathering an extensive amount of information in response to their request.

“Once this information is compiled, ICE has offered to give a briefing to Mr. Stewart and his colleagues. ICE has also alerted Virginia officials to the fact that any personally identifiable information they have requested about aliens encountered by ICE in Virginia is protected under the Privacy Act and will be redacted from any materials shared by ICE.”

So the federal agency whose main mission is to enforce federal immigration law is not only releasing convicted criminals who entered the U.S. illegally and victimized American citizens back into local communities, it’s now in the business of protecting the “privacy rights” of these felons and refusing to share “personally identifiable information” with duly elected local officials and law enforcement.

Draw your own conclusions

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/update-illegal-immigrant-criminals-back-on-street-thanks-to-ice-105345073.html#ixzz13Iru6sVT

Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

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THE PRESIDENT OF MEXICO DEMANDS LEGALS STOP SPEWING ALL THAT RACIST ANTI-IMMIGRANT RHETORIC…. By order of LA RAZA, “THE RACE”, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA!

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Lou Dobbs Tonight

Monday, February 11, 2008

In California, League of United Latin American Citizens has adopted a resolution to declare "California Del Norte" a sanctuary zone for immigrants. The declaration urges the Mexican government to invoke its rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo "to seek third nation neutral arbitration of ....disputes concerning immigration laws and their enforcement." We’ll have the story.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in New York today on the first leg his five day tour across America to meddle in immigration issues in the United States. This is his first visit to the U.S. since he became President in 2006, but he will not meet with President Bush or any of the presidential candidates, who he has accused of spewing anti immigrant rhetoric. Join us for that report.

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UPDATE: ‘Illegal immigrant criminals back on street, thanks to ICE’

By: Barbara Hollingsworth

Local Opinion Editor

10/20/10 10:40 AM EDT

Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

Stewart also says that he is still waiting for information he requested about the whereabouts of some 2,739 criminals convicted in Prince William County since 2007 and sent to ICE for deportation. County police officers have already recaptured 249 of these felons.

Here is ICE’s response, received after deadline Tuesday:

“ICE has been in contact with Virginia law enforcement as well as state and local officials, including Mr. Stewart, on this issue. These officials are aware that ICE is currently in the process of gathering an extensive amount of information in response to their request.

“Once this information is compiled, ICE has offered to give a briefing to Mr. Stewart and his colleagues. ICE has also alerted Virginia officials to the fact that any personally identifiable information they have requested about aliens encountered by ICE in Virginia is protected under the Privacy Act and will be redacted from any materials shared by ICE.”

So the federal agency whose main mission is to enforce federal immigration law is not only releasing convicted criminals who entered the U.S. illegally and victimized American citizens back into local communities, it’s now in the business of protecting the “privacy rights” of these felons and refusing to share “personally identifiable information” with duly elected local officials and law enforcement.

Draw your own conclusions

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/update-illegal-immigrant-criminals-back-on-street-thanks-to-ice-105345073.html#ixzz13Iru6sVT

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Audit looks at migrant re-arrests

McClatchy Newspapers

Jan. 9, 2007 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Some illegal immigrants are being released from prison only to be arrested on new charges despite government efforts to deport them and keep them out of the country.

The findings are part of an audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine that suggest authorities are still struggling to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes, even though most state and local authorities are notifying immigration authorities of the imminent release of prisoners.

Fine's office analyzed the cases of 100 immigrants who had served time in prison and found 73 of them were rearrested after being released.

On average, each immigrant was rearrested six times, ranging from traffic violations to assault.

If the sample was any indication, "The rate at which released criminal aliens are rearrested is extremely high," the report said.

Last year, Homeland Security's inspector general said immigration authorities expected that most of the 300,000 illegal and legal immigrants eligible to be deported would be released.

Federal officials said they would need 34,000 additional beds at a cost of $1.1 billion to detain and remove all of them.

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Some Illegal Immigrants Have Been Arrested and Re-Arrested 6 Times

Reply to: comm-259925077@craigslist.org

Date: 2007-01-09, 11:12AM

Some Illegal Immigrants have been arrested and Re-Arrested 6 Times - Illegal Immigrants arrested for being in the United States illegally may have been charged up to six more times, for more serious crimes, after they were released by local authorities. Additionally, the number of illegal immigrants deported after being declared a felon is on the rise.

The Justice findings by department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine examined the criminal histories of 100 illegal immigrants arrested and then released by local and state authorities in 2004, the latest complete data available. Of the sample group of 100, according to the audit, 73 immigrants were later arrested a collective 429 times - on charges ranging from traffic tickets to weapons and drug charges.

The data suggest "the rate at which released criminal aliens are re-arrested is extremely high," the audit noted. The report, parts of which were redacted, was required by Congress in 2005 and looked at how local and state authorities that receive Justice Department funding are working with the Homeland Security Department.

For years, the government was forced to release thousands of illegal immigrants who were caught in the United States because of not enough jail space and other resources. But last fall, with immigration as a key election-year priority, Homeland Security declared it would detain 99 percent of non-Mexican illegal immigrants until they could be returned to their home nations. The policy generally does not apply to Mexicans, who are almost immediately returned to Mexico after being stopped by Border Patrol agents.

The Justice audit, however, only looked at immigrants who were arrested and released by local and state authorities before they could be turned over to Homeland Security to be detained or deported. In all, 752 cities, counties and states participating in the program received $287 million in 2005, the audit noted.

Five states - California, New York, Texas, Florida and Arizona - received the bulk of the money, together pulling in more than $184 million.

Assistant Attorney General Regina B. Schofield, who oversees the Office of Justice Programs that controlled the funding, declined comment on the audit, noting that it does not contain any recommendations.

A separate report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University showed that the number of immigrants who were deported as "aggravated felons" doubled over the last 15 years, from 10,303 in 1992 to an estimated 23,065 in 2006.

But TRAC, which obtained the data from the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review, noted concerns that some of those immigrants never committed felonies.

"An individual can be declared an aggravated felon on the basis of a conviction on misdemeanor charges such as shoplifting," the TRAC report concluded.

The Obama administration is changing the federal immigration enforcement strategy in ways that reduce the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, even as states such as Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, Ohio and Texas are pushing to accelerate deportations.

The changes focus enforcement on immigrants who have committed serious crimes, an effort to unclog immigration courts and detention centers. A record backlog of deportation cases has forced immigrants to wait an average 459 days for their hearings, according to an Aug. 12 report by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which analyzes government data.

•A proposed directive from Morton posted on ICE's website for public comment last month would generally prohibit police from using misdemeanor traffic stops to send people to ICE. Traffic stops have led to increased deportations in recent years, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank whose research supports tighter enforcement.

The directive said exceptions would be made in certain cases, such as when immigrants have serious criminal records.

•ICE officers have been told to "exercise discretion" when deciding whether to detain "long-time lawful permanent residents, juveniles, the immediate family members of U.S. citizens, veterans, members of the armed forces and their families, and others with illnesses or special circumstances," Daniel Ragsdale, ICE executive associate director of management, testified July 1 in the administration's lawsuit to block Arizona's controversial immigration law. The law requires police officers to determine the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there was a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the USA illegally. A U.S. district judge has held up the provision pending review.

•A draft memo from ICE's sister agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, to Morton discussed ways the administration could adjust regulations so certain groups, such as college students and the spouses of military personnel, could legalize their status or at least avoid deportation if Congress doesn't pass comprehensive immigration reform. USCIS rules on applications for visas, work permits and citizenship. USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the memo was intended to stimulate brainstorming on how to legalize immigrants if new laws aren't passed.

The administration's new direction puts it at odds with those who believe the nation's immigration laws should be strictly enforced and that all illegal immigrants should be deported.

ICE is "thumbing its nose at the law," said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the top Republican on the House immigration subcommittee.

The changes have also drawn complaints from immigration advocates. They say deportations under Obama are at record highs and immigrants who remain behind are living in limbo, without work permits, Social Security cards or driver's licenses.

"This isn't a free ticket," said Raed Gonzalez, a Houston attorney who saw cases against his clients dropped last month. "The government can put them back into proceedings at any time."

Morton said in an interview that the new strategy is smarter, not softer, enforcement. At a time when more than 10 million people are in the country illegally, record sums are spent on enforcement and the federal budget faces huge deficits, it makes sense to target people who pose the biggest threat to public safety or national security, he said.

"Congress provides enough money to deport a little less than 400,000 people," Morton said. "My perspective is those 400,000 people shouldn't be the first 400,000 people in the door but rather 400,000 people who reflect some considered government enforcement policy based on a rational set of objectives and priorities."

ICE statistics show that deportations have increased dramatically from 189,000 in 2001 to 387,000 in 2009. Much of the increase results from deportations of people who haven't committed serious crimes, according to TRAC.

This year, however, that trend took a sharp turn, according to an Aug. 12 TRAC report.

The number of criminal immigrants removed by ICE "climbed to an all-time high," the report said. In fiscal 2010, which began Oct. 1, "The removal pace of criminal aliens ... is fully 60 percent higher than in the last year of the Bush administration, and at least a third (37%) higher than in the first year of the Obama administration."

“Just last week, a Dallas newspaper reported that Mexican drug violence hit record levels in scale and brutality in 2010. More than 13,000 people were murdered across Mexico in disturbing and cruel ways not commonly seen in previous years and the problem is especially critical along the U.S. border. A few months ago a veteran federal agent revealed that Middle Eastern terrorists regularly enter the country through the porous, 2,000-mile Mexican border.”

Known as the Boquillas crossing, the port of entry is located in southwest Texas’ Big Bend National Park, an 800,000-acre oasis known for its diverse terrain of deserts, mountains and rivers. The Boquillas crossing, which links the U.S. to the Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen across the Rio Grande River, was shut down after the 2001 terrorist attacks because it represented a national security threat.

Amid escalating drug cartel crime in Mexico and reports of Middle Eastern terrorists slipping into the U.S. through the southern border, Homeland Security officials will reopen the crossing in 2012. It will be “monitored” by immigration officials hundreds of miles away and those entering the U.S. will submit documents electronically, according to a San Antonio newspaper report.

The U.S. government will construct an information center and bathrooms to accommodate border crossers and the area will return to the pre 9/11 “bi-national community” where Americans regularly boated across the Rio Grande and Mexicans came into the U.S. for groceries. Area residents who expressed security concerns were reassured by the head of the Homeland Security agency handling the matter.

“People who act criminally will act criminally regardless if there’s a lawful crossing here,” said Alan Bersin, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that guards the nation’s borders and safeguards the American homeland. Bersin flew to the area by helicopter to announce the reopening, which is scheduled for next spring.

He does admit that Mexico has a “long way to go” in combating organized crime and corruption, but says the country has “acknowledged the problem” and taken “corrective action.” Besides, a legal rowboat crossing on a remote, shallow portion of the Rio Grande won’t affect illegal immigration or contraband, according to Bersin.

Just last week, a Dallas newspaper reported that Mexican drug violence hit record levels in scale and brutality in 2010. More than 13,000 people were murdered across Mexico in disturbing and cruel ways not commonly seen in previous years and the problem is especially critical along the U.S. border. A few months ago a veteran federal agent revealed that Middle Eastern terrorists regularly enter the country through the porous, 2,000-mile Mexican border.

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THE MEXICANS INVADE ARMED!

MACCLATCHY

Seizing AK-47s at the Texas border

Posted: 13 Jan 2011 03:51 PM PST

To judge by the comments that poured in after I wrote this story about the smuggling of automatic weapons from the U.S. to Mexico, many Americans don’t believe that it is happening. And they told me so in dozens of emails and postings.

They say the Mexican drug cartels use automatic weapons, not the semiautomatic weapons available at gun shops in Texas and Arizona.

The cartels are stealing their weapons from the Mexican army, getting them from Central America and buying them on the world market. But getting them at a gun shop in Houston or Phoenix? No way, Jose.

In fact, it is not hard to alter an AK-47 semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic one. A Mexican army general showed me how. And regardless of what some readers say, the guns are flowing across the border. Just today, the customs and immigration branch of Homeland Security announced that it had caught a pickup truck with 15 AK-47s coming across the border (press release here).

“Federal agents received a call from Hidalgo Police Department after officers conducted a traffic stop on the city's east side on highway 281. During the officer's routine inspection of the vehicle, they identified suspicious activity. ICE HSI agents arrived at the scene of the traffic stop and took the vehicle to the Hidalgo Port of Entry where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers conducted an intensive examination of the vehicle. It was during the examination that officers discovered the rifles hidden inside the fuel tank of the pickup truck.

"Weapons trafficking fuels violence by criminal organizations and threatens the security of communities along our borders and throughout the country," said Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in San Antonio."

Authorities arrested the driver and the passenger, Antonio Ibarra, 41, and Edwardo Ibarra, 37, respectively, on state charges for firearms smuggling.

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Threat grows as Mexican cartels move to beef up U.S. presence

By William Booth and Nick Miroff

Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, October 19, 2010; 1:36 AM

SAN DIEGO -- When a major Mexican drug cartel opened a branch office here on the California side of the border, U.S. authorities tapped into their cellphones - then listened, watched and waited.

Their surveillance effort captured more than 50,000 calls over six months, conversations that reached deep into Mexico and helped build a sprawling case against 43 suspects - including Mexican police and top officials - allegedly linked to a savage trafficking ring known as the Fernando Sanchez Organization.

According to the wiretaps and confidential informants, the suspects plotted kidnappings and killings and hired American teenage girls, with nicknames like Dopey, to smuggle quarter-pound loads of methamphetamine across the border for $100 a trip. To send a message to a rival, they dumped a disemboweled dog in his mother's front yard.

But U.S. law enforcement officials say the most worrisome thing about the Fernando Sanchez Organization was how aggressively it moved to set up operations in the United States, working out of a San Diego apartment it called "The Office."

At a time of heightened concern in Washington that drug violence along the border may spill into the United States, the case dubbed "Luz Verde," or Green Light, shows how Mexican cartels are trying to build up their U.S. presence.

The Fernando Sanchez Organization's San Diego venture functioned almost like a franchise, prosecutors say, giving it greater control over lucrative smuggling routes and drug distribution networks north of the border.

"They moved back and forth, from one side to the other. They commuted. We had lieutenants of the organization living here in San Diego and ordering kidnappings and murders in Mexico," said Todd Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney who will prosecute the alleged drug ring next year.

The case shows that as the border becomes less of an operational barrier for Mexican cartels, it appears to be less of one for U.S. surveillance efforts. Because the suspects' cellphone and radio traffic could be captured by towers on the northern side of the border, U.S. agents were able to eavesdrop on calls made on Mexican cellphones, between two callers in Mexico - a tactic prosecutors say has never been deployed so extensively.

Captured on one wiretap: a cartel leader, a former homicide detective from Tijuana, negotiating with a Mexican state judicial police officer about a job offer to lead a death squad.

Recorded on other calls: the operation's biggest catch, Jesus Quinones Marquez, a high-ranking Mexican official and alleged cartel operative code-named "El Rinon," or "The Kidney." As he worked and socialized with U.S. law enforcement officials in his role as international liaison for the Baja California attorney general's office, Quinones passed confidential information to cartel bosses and directed Mexican police to take action against rival traffickers, prosecutors say.

He and 34 other suspects are now in U.S. jails. The remaining eight are still at large.

Investigators say it is not unusual for Mexican cartel leaders and their underlings to move north to seek refuge, or place representatives in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta to manage large deliveries of drugs. But the Fernando Sanchez Organization was more ambitious. It was building a network in San Diego, complete with senior managers to facilitate large and small drug shipments and sales.

Cross-border network

The gang is an offshoot of the Tijuana cartel, led by baby-faced Fernando Sanchez Arellano, a nephew of the once fearsome Arellano-Felix brothers who ran the Tijuana drug trade for almost 20 years before they were captured or killed. The nephew's organization is a weaker syndicate, at war with itself and rivals, police say, and locked in a desperate struggle to maintain market share in the highly competitive billion-dollar drug corridor into California.

Unlike the cartel crews in Mexico, which are typically built on strong ties between families or friends, the San Diego franchise recruited from U.S.-based Latino street gangs. Some were illegal immigrants, others U.S. citizens, according to arrest warrants. Twelve of the 43 indicted have alleged gang affiliations in San Diego. Six of the 43 are current or former Mexican law enforcement officers. Eight are women.

"You couldn't pick these people out of a crowd," said Leonard Miranda, a retired captain in the Chula Vista, Calif., police department who worked on the investigation. "Some of them kept a very low profile. Their family members didn't even know."

According to the 86-page federal racketeering indictment unsealed July 23, cartel members operated stash houses, managed smuggling crews, distributed marijuana and methamphetamine, trafficked weapons, laundered money, committed robberies and collected drug debts. When people did not pay, they were kidnapped or targeted with execution on both sides of the border.

U.S. authorities say the wiretaps allowed them to foil murder plots and other violent acts. The assistant special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI office, David Bowdich, said his teams stopped the execution of two Mexican police officers. The authorities also saved a cartel associate called "Sharky" who was going to be killed because he had disrespected drug lords in Tijuana.

Troubling signs

From their apartments by the beach or cars parked at motels, the targets of the investigation talked and talked on their cellphones.

They almost always spoke in Spanish, usually in clipped code, with lots of street slang. They bought and quickly discarded the phones. Top lieutenants often employed "alineadores," personal assistants who juggled a dozen phones and took messages so that the boss would not be heard on the line. Investigators say the alleged cartel members clearly were afraid that their calls could be monitored.

And they were right. In February, the FBI secured hard-to-get "roving" wiretaps for 44 individuals that allowed investigators to track their movements via global positioning satellites.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, the Mexican government was not involved in the investigation.

Quinones, the high-ranking Mexican official, was a close adviser to Attorney General Rommel Moreno, the top prosecutor in Mexico's Baja California state. He was arrested July 22 when U.S. agents invited him to the San Diego police department to help with an investigation. It was a setup.

"My client's gone from a cross-border international liaison officer to a guy in a 10-by-10-foot isolation cell in lockdown 23 hours a day," said his defense attorney, Patrick Hall, who described Quinones as "a normal dad with three kids, married 11 years, who lived in Tijuana all his adult life and was one of the dads out there at the Little League baseball games."

Hall said the federal agents were "reading in facts and interpretations and distortions into the true meanings of what's being said on the wiretaps."

Quinones's arrest has almost certainly dealt a blow to efforts at cross-border information sharing and collaboration, though officials on both sides played down the apparent betrayal. "Would you stop going to church just because of one bad priest?" Quinones's boss, Moreno, said in an interview in Tijuana.

But the U.S. wiretaps also detected other troubling signs of corruption.

On the day of the mass arrests, U.S. agents arranged for suspected drug lieutenant Jose Najera Gil to pick up visa documents he was seeking from the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. But the Mexican police who were supposed to arrest him at the consulate failed to show up.

A day before the arrests, another Mexican police officer, Jose Ortega Nuvo, received a call on his cellphone, which was being tapped by U.S agents. The caller warned him that he was about to be arrested. According to court testimony, the call came from the offices of the federal police in Mexico City - a special unit vetted to work alongside agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.